I lucked into some tickets at face late on Friday. So I told the old lady to start packing because we were going to Texas/OU for the 4th time. No hesitation whatsoever from her. Of course, I knew there wouldn’t be. Why?

My wife cares about only one football game all year. This is it. We went to the game three times when we were students and she had the displeasure of dealing with Sooner fans. The only time I’ve seen her almost lay an assbeating on someone was in 1999 the last time we went.

Before the game we were standing in line for one of the games or whatever. We were about halfway through it and some fucking cocksuckers little kids in OU gear were playing with one of those hard plastic footballs. Because they suck by their very nature, one of them threw the ball like shit (was probably Rhett Bomar) and it pegged an old lady in Texas gear right in the head. They didn’t apologize, of course, they just laughed. The old lady kicked their ball through the crowd under a display.

The punks ran back over to their parents and my wife and I anticipated the scolding they deserved. Nope, their father laughed with them and said the old lady deserved it for wearing that shirt.

So he and I started jawing back and forth. I basically explained the situation to him and he had a hard time understanding the multisyllabic words. The whole time our ladies are standing just off our shoulders a little behind us. His fat ugly cow is off his left shoulder and the lovely Purple Rose is just off my right shoulder, so they’re basically facing each other. At one point as he and I are about to start the actual fighting and get kicked out of the fair before the game, Bessy says “You durn’t tell us’ns how to raise urr chiljrin..MOOOOO”. At that point my lovely Purple Rose steps in front right up in the cow’s grill and says, and I quote: “He wasn’t talking to you, BITCH!”

You don’t understand. She doesn’t talk like that. She doesn’t confront. She doesn’t cuss. It was glorious. Bessy’s jaw seemed like it dropped all the way to her front hooves. Then I pulled the lovely one back before she killed the future hamburger and ruined a good meal. That’s my only regret. The visual of watching 105 pounds of fury beat the shit out of a 200-pound Okie could have carried me for the rest of my days.

So to this day this is the only football game she cares about. She doesn’t dislike anyone else. But she absolutely hates the Sooners.

With that background out of the way, we are both now 4-0 at Texas/OU games as this was the first one we’d been to since the three from 1997-99. Going back to this game after nine years was a really amazing thing for various reasons. Some of my thoughts from the game:

1,) The difference in athleticism on the Cotton Bowl turf compared to the first three times I went was even more dramatic than I thought it would be, and I was expecting a lot.

2.) Colt McCoy is a crazy good college quarterback. Easily the second best Mack has had here and it may not even be that close. He made guys miss when he had to and put the ball into some extremely small openings several times. He still has an occasional brain cramp, but he is awesome. I didn’t appreciate him his freshman year and then he slumped last year. But his level of play through 6 games this year is incredible.

3.) Brian Orakpo is a beast. I know, obvious. Phil Loadholt is supposed to be an NFL prospect, and the poor guy was holding on for dear life. His body language at one point in the third quarter indicated he knew blocking Orakpo legally was a lost cause.

4.) Oh my goodness those refs were bad. Just awful. Orakpo was held at least a dozen times that weren’t called and Loadholt also had a few illegal hands to the face infractions go uncalled. As Eyes mentioned, not once was the WR slip screen completed behind the line of scrimmage. Not once. The only sweet justice I got out of it was that we had a few key holds that went uncalled, the kind of hold that OU does every play on every block. I’m not going to apologize for it, though. Without that kind of shit, the Sooner offense would grind to a halt. I don’t even need to get into the rest of the terrible calls and non-calls.

5.) What a wonderfully coached game by Mack Brown and staff. For my money it’s the best coached game since he’s been here. Certainly since we’ve been playing really big games (I thought the Cotton Bowl win over Mississippi State and the 1999 win over Nebraska at home were very well coached). Every strategical decision they made after the midpoint of the third quarter was the right one. Every one. Even the ones that didn’t work out, like the pass to Roy Miller, were perfectly timed and in the perfect situation. I have been a critic of his coaching, like most of us on this site, but the truth is that he has frequently deserved it. But on this day he and his staff came up big in the biggest setting of all. Major tip of the cap to Mack, Davis, Muschamp and all the rest. Outstanding.

6.) I liked the Cotton Bowl additions. Maybe it was just finally being back at that game, but I loved it. I had been slowly turning to the side that would have been fine eventually moving the game to Jerryworld. No more. I want the game to stay at the Cotton Bowl during the State Fair as long as possible.

7.) I just remembered that I thought I saw something funny about the hold that was actually called (Kindle was held). It looked to me live (I was watching Kindle on that play) that the Oklahoma right tackle missed in his first attempt to grab on to the outside of Kindle’s shoulder pad and then went to regrip. You know, in the way that OU’s blockers are taught to engage a defender when the play is headed their way. Grab onto the outside of their shoulder pads and control them that way. But Sooner fans expect us to believe that they’re not being coached to hold like that. Right.

8.) OU sucks.